Memento Native

Your Mac's photographic memory — automatically records your screen and lets you search anything you've seen.

Ever closed a tab and forgot the URL? Lost an important message? Can't remember where you saw that code snippet? Memento captures your screen continuously, extracts all text using OCR, and makes it searchable. Everything stays 100% local on your Mac.

Native Swift rewrite of apirrone/Memento. Open-source alternative to Rewind.ai.

Latest (v2.0.0)

• Unified Setup Hub for first-run, permission fixes, and update recovery
• Action Hub / Command Palette (⌘F) for search + quick actions
• Direct search panel moved to ⌘K
• Menubar Control Center chips (recording state, permission state, last capture)
• Smarter capture auto-pause (idle detection + video/streaming detection)
• Improved search result reliability for older history and clearer loading states

Use Cases

• 🔍 Find by keyword — Search "invoice", "meeting", "password"
• 💬 Recover lost text — Find that message or email you closed
• 🐛 Debug timeline — Scroll back to see what happened
• 🧠 Semantic search — Find "coding tutorial" even if text says "programming lesson"
• 📋 Visual history — Browse your screen activity by time

Features

Feature	Description
📸 Screen Recording	ScreenCaptureKit (macOS 14+)
🔍 OCR Search	Apple Vision text recognition
🧠 Semantic Search	Find by meaning, not just keywords
⌨️ Action Hub	Command palette (⌘F) for actions and fast search
🛠️ Setup Hub	Unified onboarding + permission repair flow
🎛️ Menubar Control Center	Recording/paused, permission, last-capture status chips
⏸️ Smart Auto-Pause	Pause when idle or during video/streaming playback
🎨 App Learning	Auto color-codes apps in timeline
📹 H.264 Video	Hardware-accelerated encoding
💾 Full-Text Search	SQLite FTS5
⚡ Lightweight	~1% RAM, minimal CPU
🔒 Privacy-First	No cloud, no telemetry

Installation

Option 1: DMG (Recommended)

Download the latest DMG from Releases, open it, and drag both apps to Applications.

Option 2: Build from source

git clone https://github.com/owgit/memento-native.git
cd memento-native
./build-dmg.sh 2.0.0  # Creates dist/Memento-Native-2.0.0.dmg
# Or build individually:
cd MementoCapture && ./bundle.sh
cd ../MementoTimeline && ./bundle.sh

Updating

If you're updating from an older version, follow the release update steps in UPDATING.md.

Quick summary:

1. Quit both apps
2. Replace both apps in /Applications
3. Start Memento Capture first
4. Re-check Screen Recording permission if macOS asks
5. If capture still fails, open Setup Hub from the menu bar and run Repair Permissions

Setup Permissions

1. Open /Applications/Memento Capture.app
2. Follow Setup Hub prompts (recommended)
3. If needed, use Fix/Repair Permissions in Setup Hub
4. Manual fallback: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording and enable Memento Capture

You can re-open Setup Hub anytime from the menu bar app.

Keyboard Shortcuts (Timeline)

• ⌘F — Open Action Hub (Command Palette)
• ⌘K — Open direct Search panel
• ⌘T — Toggle OCR text panel
• ← / → — Previous / next frame
• Home / End — First / last frame

Requirements

Requirement	Details
macOS	14.0 Sonoma or later
Mac	Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) or Intel Mac
RAM	8GB minimum
Disk	~150MB/hour of recording
Permission	Screen Recording

Performance

Metric	Value
CPU	~1-3% (idle between captures)
RAM	~50-100MB
Capture interval	Default 2 seconds (configurable)
Video codec	H.264 hardware-accelerated

How It Works

┌─────────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│ MementoCapture  │────▶│   SQLite     │◀────│ MementoTimeline │
│                 │     │  + FTS5      │     │                 │
│ • Screenshot    │     │  + Vectors   │     │ • View frames   │
│ • Vision OCR    │     └──────────────┘     │ • Text search   │
│ • H.264 encode  │            │             │ • Semantic search│
│ • Embeddings    │            ▼             └─────────────────┘
└─────────────────┘     ~/.cache/memento/

Semantic Search

Uses Apple NaturalLanguage for on-device embeddings:

// 512-dim sentence embedding → Int8 quantized (8x compression)
NLEmbedding.sentenceEmbedding(for: .english)

Data stored in ~/.cache/memento/

Privacy

• 100% offline — works without internet
• No accounts — no sign-up required
• No telemetry — zero data collection
• Clipboard opt-in — clipboard monitoring disabled by default, toggle in menu
• Local storage — delete anytime with rm -rf ~/.cache/memento

Alternatives

App	Platform	Price	Privacy
Rewind.ai	macOS	$19/mo	Cloud
Memento (Python)	Linux	Free	Local
Memento Native	macOS	Free	Local

Roadmap

🤖 AI-Powered Search (Coming)

Local LLM integration for natural language queries:

• "What was that article about React I read yesterday?"
• "Find the Slack message from Johan about the API"
• "Show me when I was working on the login bug"
• "What did I copy to clipboard around 3pm?"

License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for personal and non-commercial use. Commercial sale prohibited.

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